Page 35 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol V

1812 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

From the 1950s onward, flying became a common based on the V-2 missile built by Germany during the
means of transportation around the world. war. Sputnik was the precursor of thousands of satellites
In peacetime, mass production meant mass consump- put into space for espionage and surveillance, television
tion of cotton clothes, railroad transportation, auto- broadcasting, and telecommunications. The most spec-
mobiles, and other consumer items. But industrial tacular event of the space age was the Moon landing of
production also made possible mass destruction in two 1969, proof of humankind’s growing power over the nat-
widespread and murderous World Wars and in the anni- ural world.
hilation of entire populations. Yet even after the most
destructive wars in history, the nations that had suffered Electronics
the heaviest damage—Russia, Germany, and Japan— Future historians will no doubt consider the new elec-
were able to rebuild remarkably quickly. Industrialization tronic technologies even more revolutionary than nuclear
spread more slowly to South Asia, the Middle East, and and rocket technology. Television, still experimental
Latin America, and has not yet begun in earnest in most before the war, became a consumer item in the 1950s in
of Africa.The industrial world is still an exclusive club. the United States and in the 1960s in Europe and Japan.
Radar, developed during the war for military purposes,
The Postindustrial World later served civilian aviation, navigation, and law enforce-
Postindustrial does not mean that industry is disappear- ment. Computers, also invented during the war, became
ing; on the contrary, there is more industry producing important business tools with IBM’s System 360 in
more products than ever before.Yet we are clearly in the 1964 used in the banking, insurance, and retail indus-
midst of another technological revolution, as dramatic— tries, among others. Apple made the first popular per-
but much faster—than the agricultural and industrial rev- sonal computers in the late 1970s, but was soon
olutions that preceded it. overshadowed by IBM and a host of smaller companies
The new revolution involves many technologies that that purchased operating systems and programs from the
can trace their origins to World War II. In that war, gov- giant of the software industry, Microsoft. In the mid-
ernments understood that their hope of victory rested on 1980s, the Internet began linking computer networks
developing new weapons and other military technolo- around the world. The World Wide Web, introduced in
gies. Such research programs were extremely costly, yet 1991, made it possible to send images as well as text, and
invention proceeded at an accelerated pace that would made the Internet so user-friendly that companies soon
not have been possible if governments had relied on pri- used it to advertise and sell their products. Most com-
vate enterprise.This realization led governments to con- puter hardware and software originated in the United
tinue funding research long after the war was over. States, but the manufacture and marketing of consumer
electronics was dominated by Japanese companies.
War-Related Technologies
The most dramatic invention of the war was the atom Biotechnology
bomb, built by the United States between 1942 and Biotechnology is another area that has seen rapid tech-
1945. After the war, the Soviet Union also built atom nological development. In 1953, James Crick and Fran-
bombs, which were followed in the 1950s, by the far cis Watson discovered DNA, the substance that encodes
more powerful hydrogen bomb. Nuclear energy was not all the information needed to create living beings. Their
limited to bombs. Nuclear reactors were harnessed to pro- findings promised advances in medicine, agriculture, and
duce electricity and to power submarines and other ships. other fields. In the 1970s, agronomists created more pro-
In 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first artificial ductive hybrids of rice, wheat, corn, and other crops: the
satellite, Sputnik.The rocket that hoisted it into orbit was Green Revolution. Since the mid-1990s, genetically